Category Archives: Politics

I’ve just finished reading through the book “Navigating The Worldviews of Egypt,” written by my cousins Anna Sophia, Elizabeth, Isaac and Noah Botkin and a variety of their colleagues (and parents and in-laws). I read it at various intervals and in small chunks, because it was difficult to consume at any length without it hurting my brain. The book is dedicated to pointing out the inferior worldviews of Egypt, starting with its pagan decadence and finishing with the more recent uprisings. Large portions of the text are dedicated to explaining that Islam is terrible and that often, Muslims will lie to you about what they actually believe (p. 93). The authors concede that there are some moderate Muslims in the world, but they insist these people aren’t really following the Koran and Mohammed’s example.

This is juxtaposed with various comments about the right way to do things, such as the right way to have adventures and take dominion over the earth. The right way to adventure is seen, for example, in the exploration and dominion of Christopher Columbus. The right way to take over a nation is seen in the example of Oliver Cromwell, whom the book speaks very fondly of. That’s right, Oliver Cromwell. The same guy who invaded Ireland and slaughtered thousands of Irish Catholics, some of them even after they’d surrendered, on the assumption that their religion would pre-dispose them to be pesky and possibly belligerent. The authors additionally pitch Cromwell killing his king and taking over the country as a good thing: “When Charles I began ruling as a tyrant and violating the common-law liberties of Englishmen, Oliver Cromwell and other Puritan men used these scriptural principles to dethrone and execute him in a lawful and orderly way which demonstrated to the world the responsibilities of Christian magistrates” (p. 168). Executing your rulers because you don’t like their tax policies: totally contrary to the words of Jesus, but apparently still part of “the responsibilities of Christian magistrates,” according to the dominion mandate.

The book explains that Islam isn’t very good to its women, as can be seen in their overly restrictive gender and dress codes. The authors quote a passage by Bojidar Marinov that seems a little ironic given recent events: “Islam leaves it to women to protect themselves and society from destruction by choosing their clothing in such a way to completely shut them off from the world… In the Shariah legislation, a woman is guilty of adultery even when raped. It must be her fault, and the man is very often absolved, as being an innocent victim of his own overwhelming lust and the woman’s lack of prudence” (p. 89). Compare this to aforementioned favorite Puritan Oliver Cromwell, who is clearly so different in his opinions about female dress: “Cromwell believed that women and girls should dress in a proper manner. Make-up was banned. Puritan leaders and soldiers would roam the streets of towns and scrub off any make-up found on unsuspecting women. Too colourful dresses were banned. A Puritan lady wore a long black dress that covered her almost from neck to toes. She wore a white apron and her hair was bunched up behind a white head-dress.”

A big part of why Islam is bad, according to the authors, is jihad. Jihad in the American vernacular is synonymous with holy war, but it isn’t interpreted that way by all Islamic scholars. In fact, one medieval Islamic scholar states that part of jihad is the improvement of society: “one of the collective duties of the community as a whole [is] … to solve problems of religion, to have knowledge of Divine Law, to command what is right and forbid wrong conduct.” Of course, the debate rages as to how far one is to go to make this happen. Should it be done with laws, with discourse, or with military might? Regardless, the authors warn that “[Islam’s] adherents have a deep sense of Islam’s moral superiority over other ethical systems, and of their authority and duty to bring the world into Islamic order… The goal of Islam is to rule the entire world and submit all of mankind to the faith of Islam” (p. 92).

Compare this to the dominion mandate, which is crucial to the Christian worldview, according to the authors. Man is “to ‘subdue’ the earth, taming it and bringing it into submission to his will under God. He acts as God’s administrator to manage creation and bring forth its treasures, cultivating its soil, mining its gold, silver, and precious stones, naming and utilizing its creatures… In summary, a biblical view of progress encompasses man’s advancement of God’s rule over every inch of the globe and over every thought and idea of man” (pp. 15-16). Put more succinctly, “The entire world has been given us to study, explore, and civilize” (p. 121).

Now compare this in turn to the people the authors state have fulfilled the dominion mandate. They state that in the 1500s, Christians were the most adventurous people on earth, which was only right and fitting (p. 121). They specifically mention Christopher Columbus (pp. 83, 121). Perhaps they are ignorant of the fact that, according to his own letters, Columbus enslaved the people he encountered and claimed everything they had as his own. Ultimately, his expedition led to forced conversions to Catholicism, rape, pillage, and often death under the so-called Christian adventurers who followed him in the 1500s. In the words of the Conquistadors’ own Requirement:

“We ask and require you … that you acknowledge the Church as the ruler and superior of the whole world,

But if you do not do this, and maliciously make delay in it, I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter into your country, and shall make war against you in all ways and manners that we can, and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church and of their highnesses; we shall take you, and your wives, and your children, and shall make slaves of them, and as such shall sell and dispose of them as their highnesses may command; and we shall take away your goods, and shall do you all the mischief and damage that we can, as to vassals who do not obey, and refuse to receive their lord, and resist and contradict him: and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault, and not that of their highnesses, or ours, nor of these cavaliers who come with us.”

Perhaps the authors are ignorant, or perhaps this fits well with their idea of the dominion mandate. Change the name Don Cristóbal to Mohammed al Hussein, and you’ve got something that looks like the worst kind of jihad; but since Columbus and the Conquistadors were ostensibly Christians, it’s called “taking dominion of the earth,” and celebrated.

The authors also point to the bloodshed and in-fighting of warring tribes and factions within Islam, saying “It is not an accident that the political legacy of Islam, when examined as a whole, has been a series of autocratic tyrants replacing each other by bloodshed” (72). The same thing could be said for the vast majority of Europe’s history, and yet the authors do not even seem to imagine a world where Europe’s wars of religion and family feuding besmirch the “political legacy” of Christianity in the slightest. Apparently bloodshed, and specifically beheading your king, is fine as long as it’s done by someone with the correct theology. Of course, this is exactly what Islamic militants believe also.

In spite of these obvious similarities, the authors go to great pains to point out the specific differences between Shariah and Biblical law. They claim that, for example, “Biblical law is consistent, reflecting the unchanging character of God,” whereas “Shariah law changed with Muhammad’s changing moral opinions” (p. 75). I suppose this would explain why the authors quote Old Testament law so extensively, and why they reference passages such as Deut. 22:13-19 (p. 88) as being more beneficial to modern women than the current laws. However, the authors are not intellectually honest, since they claim that, for example, the Koran requires whipping for a raped girl, while the Bible demands that she go free and the man be punished (p. 75). Obviously, however, Muslims have a different take on this, and the Koran actually says that whipping is for fornication, applied equally to both parties — although in some traditional societies, a woman must prove she was raped by producing four eyewitnesses, which rarely seems to work out well for her.

Additionally, the Biblical mandate the authors quote is only for certain rape scenarios, which I’m sure the authors know very well. There are other scenarios in the Mosaic Law where this isn’t the case: if the raped woman is not betrothed, she is handed off to her rapist permanently, as his wife, after the rapist pays her father. There is also another passage in the Mosaic Law where women who are raped in the city and “do not cry out” are required to be stoned to death, on the assumption that the burden is on the woman to get someone’s else’s attention — presumably someone who will testify on her behalf, like in the Koran — or it’s not really rape. In a recent webinar, Anna Sophia and Elizabeth reference this passage, saying if you are being molested, you must cry out or the burden of sin is upon you also. They say this even after admitting that most women naturally freeze up under such circumstances.

In another passage within the book, the authors state that the Koran promotes killing people who don’t believe the same things they do, while the Bible commands that strangers are to be welcomed as guests. Of course, the authors have once again cherry-picked their verses, since there are a host of them in the Old Testament about God’s chosen people being commanded to wipe out all the men, women, children and even livestock of heathen nations.

So who’s being disingenuous about what they believe now? Or, alternately, is Biblical law and precedent something the authors think changes?

Throughout the book, the idea that culture is an expression of religion, and that all people are religious, is touted over and over again. Religion is defined as “A person’s network of pre-theoretical assumptions about God, self, and reality. Every person has one and every action of a person flows from these core beliefs” (p. 44). By the authors’ own estimation, the mass killings of other populations by Christians, then, are part and parcel of their Christian faith. There could be no other possible motivation, since religion is your “pre-theoretical assumptions” and all of your actions. It’s a bizarre statement, but it must be followed to its logical end. Additionally, in a section called “What Long-Term Judgement Can Look Like,” the authors state that Coptic Christians are to blame for their persecution by the Muslims, because they have not fulfilled the Great Commission (pp. 108-109). So there you have it: not only are all of your actions part of your religion, what is done to you is part of your religion also.

SALEM, Mass — Over 60 Puritans have been killed today as the death toll rises on both sides of the conflict in Essex County. The Naumkeag people have also suffered, having lost 14 warriors and two other members of their tribe since the fighting began a month ago.

“We were here first,” said a Naumkeag warrior who spoke with us on the condition of anonymity. “The Puritans are terrorists who oppress and kill us as well as their own kind. Their women are tortured and hanged and made to wear funny bonnets. Their morality is positively medieval.”

According to a treaty created by the sovereign state of England, the Naumkeags are entitled to most of Essex County. The Puritans are allowed to remain within Salem city limits, but in practice have been regulated to Gallows Hill as the Naumkeags have moved in on the other neighborhoods after carpet-bombing them with pig’s bladder balloons full of poison gas, as well as long-distance trebuchet shrapnel bombs. Pickering Wharf is now blockaded by the Naumkeags.

“They were asking for it,” the same warrior said. “They elected a mayor who is known to be hostile to our kind, and they refused to come to the peace talks in England. It all started because a white person killed three of our teenagers, so it’s really their fault. All we want is peace. We tell them we’re going to bomb them, and they still don’t leave their homes. They keep shooting muskets in the air instead. One of the bullets actually hit someone. They will not rest until we are all dead.”

“We could not make it to the peace talks,” Puritan mother Chastity Brown explained from her kitchen near Gallows Hill. “They blockaded the port and took our boats. They bombed our gardens. We have no food now. Over a hundred of our children have been killed by the airstrikes. They tell us to surrender, but if we surrender we don’t know what they will do to us. They have already taken so much of our land and killed so many of our people. They tell us it’s their land, but I was born here too. My father was born here.” Brown stops and begins to sob. “They shot my son as he was playing kickball in a field.”

Over 500 Puritans have died since the conflict in Essex County started. A Naumkeag chief recently called for “the killing of all mothers who breed little Puritan snakes,” and about 50 Naumkeags have recently taken to a hilltop to watch the long-distance bombings with a spyglass and cheer when something or someone gets hit. “#bloodforblood,” one Naumkeag elder wrote in the sky via smoke signal.

The English government has provided the pig’s-bladder balloon bombs and trebuchets, and several English banks have made agreements to invest in experimental weapons and land-clearing devices, since the Naumkeags are excellent innovators.

A faction of high-ranking Anglican dispensationalists believe that the Bible foretells the second coming of Christ to Salem, but that this will only happen if Salem is not populated by the Puritans, who are their enemies.

I grew up hearing a lot about the Israeli-Palestian conflict, and it was always the same story: the Palestinians were the aggressors, Israel barely holding its own and hoping to eventually settle conflicts that had been there for thousands of years. But Israel was for Jews, that much was clear. Because the Babylonians took their land, then the Romans, then all kinds of other people. And, most importantly, because the Bible foretold the Jews returning to Israel (or something) and because this would have something to do with the second coming of Christ. But it was complicated. There was a lot of fighting. War In the Middle East. Peace Talks. All those headlines.

In brief, Israel needed its land back and was fighting to make that happen, which was good progress as far as most people I knew were concerned. But when I actually read the Bible, that seemed a little weird. Or at least when I read the gospels. Jesus was teaching during a time when many Jews, including at least one of his own disciples, were Zealots. Zealots wanted the Roman invaders off their land, and were willing to fight to make that happen. But Jesus said things that were completely anti-Zealot. Such as “render unto Caesar,” “if any man compels you to go one mile, go with him two,” and “love your enemies.” In the context of a people group oppressed and frequently compelled by invaders, this was anti-intuitive, and not all his disciples were keen on it.

Some historians and theologians, in fact, argue that Judas Iscariot was a Zealot, and not just any kind of Zealot, but a sicarious, an assassin who was willing to kill not just the Romans, but Jews who didn’t go along with getting rid of the Romans. Read this way, it certainly puts an interesting spin on things. Alerted by the authorities, who in turn have been alerted by Judas, Roman soldiers and temple guards show up to take Jesus prisoner, Judas in tow. Peter fights back by whacking someone’s ear off. Before anyone can do anything else, Jesus rebukes Peter, and goes off with the soldiers. Judas is upset and hangs himself. A very quick change of heart for such a heinous action, unless you assume Judas was betting on the other disciples fighting back, betting on Jesus acting in self-defense and from there sparking a larger Zealot following to rise against the Romans and re-gain Israel. Jesus could do it: Judas had seen the crowds adore him. But that wasn’t Jesus’ style.

So this is why it is puzzling that Christians are defending civilian killings of Palestinians in the recent Gaza airstrikes. It’s puzzling even if you accept the premise that all of Israel should belong to the Israelis. It’s even more puzzling when you look at the map of Israel over the last 60 years and see how the Palestinian territories have shrunk — it’s not the Jews who are being invaded this time; this time, they’re the invaders.

So it seems to have less to do with theology than with religious propaganda. If you can convince a group of people that something is a necessary part of their religion, they’ll go along with it, no matter how many children are being killed in the process. Of course, this is easier if you label the Palestinian extremists who kill two citizens “terrorists,” while maintaining that Palestinian death tolls of hundreds of children, bombing of hospitals, using chemical weapons on neighborhoods, calling for the killing of Palestianian mothers and so on, are all part of a war, a two-sided conflict. And justified, at that. Jesus would have wanted it that way. Someone in your territory kills one of ours, well, our military will kill a hundred of you. The true meaning of “turn the other cheek,” no doubt. A hundred eyes for an eye.

But maps of invasions don’t lie. Civilian casualty numbers don’t lie. They’re cold and hard, removed from the spin of either side, and they should trigger appropriate condemnation from all people — Christians included.

The Bangkok protests escalated this past week, and subsequently switched gears. I reported on the protests for the Spokesman-Review, and here are a few photos showing how mundane they looked most of the time. Near Lumpini Park, only a day after a gunman had shot at protestors and wounded one in the leg, people napped in the blocked-off streets and watched videos of a larger protest happening live outside Royal Thai Police headquarters.

Security around Lumpini park was nonexistent following last Tuesday’s shooting, but the Ratchaprasong protestors, with their far more extensive network of tents and manpower, had erected a barrier and a checkpoint for bag searches. Most of the protestors there sold Thailand flag-themed goods, and some also napped. The streets in question had been shut off to traffic, hampering normal travel to certain areas. Taxi driver Thaneesak Thongsavet, who has been in the business for over ten years, has seen more congestion than normal and fewer customers coming to Bangkok since the protests started. “No good, no good,” he said of the protests, shaking his head. The blocked roads were cleared this weekend, with protest leader Suthep Thaugsuban noting that they “would like to return traffic lanes to our Bangkok brothers and sisters,” although the protestors will continue to call for the removal of the prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, and her government.

Sometimes I stop and think for awhile about my job, and about the long chain of assumptions that lead out into its final goal, which nine times out of ten is that people will purchase (or remain loyal to) a product that did not originate in their own culture. Localization is primarily about making the foreign seem local; by adaptation and translation, and yes, sometimes that means hiring actual local people. I like focusing on that part of it, on the part that says the local people are always the experts, and they get to tell these enormous multinational corporations what to do on some small level. I like that my field is replete with those who understand the power of cultural nuance, of linguistic nuance. There’s something that can feel very magical, very special, about a group of people who care that much about cultural identity and the way it’s expressed. The whole point may be to sell services to those large multinational corporations, who in turn want to sell something to the masses, but it feels more noble than that. It feels like we actually care about everyone in the world.

Sometimes, of course, we really do. I’ve been very proud of the efforts our industry has gone to in providing free services to those who need it most. At times, I think this is the great big missing piece, something that really could change the world for the better if it’s used correctly. Offering knowledge, bridging cultural differences, locales, language, mitigating cultural slights — this can mean peace rather than war, alliance rather than xenophobia. It’s all very P.C. and feel-good, while at the same time it’s excellent for capitalism. Localization is staunchly bipartisan, and often apolitical. We don’t take sides — we interpret.

And yet we do need to pay attention to politics, because politics affect global business and signal shifts within nations and regions. In the case of Thailand, the site of Localization World’s upcoming February conference, the politics are a little complicated and have recently been a source of contention. The New York Timesreports that “the most important political decisions in this country of 65 million people have been made from abroad, by a former prime minister who has been in self-imposed exile since 2008 to escape corruption charges,” who rules by proxy using various officials, including his sister, whom he nominated for prime minister in 2011. Many Thais find this situation to be illegitimate, and have taken to the streets in protest in recent weeks, attempting to “shut down” Bangkok’s government. According to most reports on the ground, the protests are peaceful and even fun, as can be see in this video. They are limited to certain areas of Bangkok, and have already waned a bit.

Of course, this isn’t the most stable climate for conducting certain kinds of business deals. But I think that for our business, it’s an important kind of reality to face. Our future lies in markets such as this — the emerging markets, the ones attempting to move in positive directions, the ones that have traditionally been considered less than rock-solid. Thailand is a serious market contender, and is starting to take the place in the global market that China took previously, and that Japan took prior to that. Keeping an eye on its current reality potentially means a step up for anyone seriously considering global industry.

So, from a business perspective, I’m actually very excited to be going to Bangkok in a few short weeks. On a more personal level, there’s nothing quite like feeling the pulse of a place that is trying to better itself through peaceful means.

Apparently, I am one of the few people in America who had heard of Alone Yet Not Alone before today, when the internet exploded with a collective “WTF?” over the movie’s Oscar nomination.

I’d heard of it because I am loosely connected to the independent Christian movie scene, or more specifically, the quiverfull, dominion-mandate Christian movie scene. The movie was supposed to premiere in 2012 at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival, which shut down recently with the closing of Vision Forum ministries and the resignation of Doug Phillips. This same Doug Phillips has two children who appear in Alone Yet Not Alone. He himself was originally cast in the movie, but either his role or its credit was cut after the scandal of his resignation. Tracy Leininger Craven, the author of the book the movie is based on, has written a series of books that still appear in the Vision Forum catalogue, adhering to the Vision Forum ideal that women are called to serve God by serving men. “Each heroine’s story points to… the way [God] can use ordinary people to accomplish great things when they are faithfully walking in their calling as wife, mother, or daughter,” the catalogue explains. The cast and crew have similar ideals — the full cast list of the movie reads like a partial who’s who of dominion-mandate Christian entrepreneurs.

If you’ve never heard of either “quiverfull” or the “dominion mandate,” allow me to briefly explain: quiverfull is the ideology that families should have as many children “as God gives them,” using no contraception of any kind. This is usually coupled with homeschooling the children (and often stopping formal education at age 18 or younger, particularly for females) and “training them up in the way they should go.” The longterm goal of quiverfull families is to essentially win the “culture wars” by having exponentially-increasing descendants who adhere to a specific set of beliefs. In essence, “take dominion” of the world for Christ and reconstruct it, with the goal to revive some form of Old Testament law, though the details are a bit murky and somewhat debated. My uncle, Geoff Botkin, went a step further and began selling the idea of a “200 year plan,” in concert with Doug Phillips, wherein every Christian patriarch should have a 200-year, multigenerational vision for his family, complete with a spreadsheet. So far, none of my uncle’s adult children have left home, and they contribute to his ministry, so it seems like it’s working pretty well for him.

When I say that this group of people wants a return to Old Testament law, I mean that it even goes so far as to promote the reinstitution of slavery. The founder of Christian Reconstructionism, R.J. Rushdoony, writes that “The [Biblical] Law here is humane and also unsentimental. It recognizes that some people are by nature slaves and will always be so. It both requires that they be dealt with in a godly manner and also that the slave recognizes his position and accepts it with grace.” Other Christian dominionists — Dan Horn comes to mind — have explained that slavery can be beneficial when it teaches heathens to be good Christians, or when it gives good Christians the tools they need to expand their empire.

The movie Alone Yet Not Alone has been called racist because of its portrayal of Native Americans, but that’s not really accurate. It’s actually reflecting the idea that Christian culture is superior to Native American culture; that other types of culture are hostile to real Christianity, and that real Christianity can and must eventually take over these other cultures.

It is not at all surprising to me that the dominionist crowd has managed to finally finagle an Oscar nomination. Not because the song being nominated is Oscar-worthy — it’s mediocre at best — but because the song’s originators have friends in high places: Bruce Broughton is a former Governor of the Academy and a former head of its music branch, and William Ross is conductor of the Oscar ceremony’s orchestra. It sounds very much like something politically-minded billionaire James Leininger, the father of Tracy Leininger Craven and likely a strong historical supporter of Vision Forum, would try to arrange.

In this case, the dominion-mandate crowd can take dominion using plain old networking. No need to wait for those 156,000 male descendants to get to voting age.

Kelsey asked if I wanted to be her water-testing buddy today for Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper, and I said sure. So we took a boat out to Bottle Bay, where she tested the murkiness of the water and took samples from the depth at which her line disappeared (6.4 meters today, averaged out over multiple dips for maximum accuracy). She took enough to test nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, and more, and refrigerated the samples until they could be sent to the lab. During the summer, she and volunteers do this each month from multiple sites around the lake. This way, they can collect data and track water quality levels over time, and alert the authorities if something goes wrong. Like if city beach gets polluted with chemical waste or something.

My Grandfather, John Norman Botkin, died 11 years ago, on September 21, 2001. I was in France — I had moved in with a French woman only two weeks prior after studying French for all of four months, and was dazed from the constant barrage of this largely-unknown language, from the sudden uncertainty of 9/11, and everything else that went with that. I was unable to go back for his funeral. He was buried with military rites.

Over the years it has occurred to me that although I was around him often throughout my childhood, I knew so much less about him than I wanted to. He was born on May 1, 1918, grew up during the Depression “without a penny,” according to my Grandmother, and his father was a street preacher for awhile. I knew he was a soldier — an Army man; he was in the Corps of Engineers in WWII and led troops as a Major in Korea. Perhaps for both of these reasons, he could come off as stern, and he worked hard. He was fastidious about correcting my grammar and word choice growing up, and woe unto you if you said “guy” in his presence. “They are not guys,” Grandfather would say “guy is a derogatory reference to Guy Fawkes.” But he could also be quite jovial. One of my earliest memories of him took place on his porch swing, and as he sang me “Rock a Bye Baby,” his end of the swing fell to the ground. He began to laugh. “Down will come Grandfather, cradle and all,” he said.

He took a lot of pills for his health — heart medications, cholesterol medications — after his heart bypass, which happened when I was still quite young. He was a larger man, and he enjoyed his hamburgers even after the bypass. For my fourteenth birthday, he bought me a subscription to National Review. I was a little in awe of him. He’d gone to Harvard. He’d studied law there, but decided that he could not bring himself to defend guilty men, so he switched schools and emerged a geophysicist instead. He said he never took notes at Harvard because he was working too hard outside of class to support himself. “I didn’t have time to study,” he told me “So I just paid attention.” Years later, when I went to college, I remembered this, and in between taking notes I would just stare intently at the professor and attempt to memorize every word. It seemed to work pretty well, actually. Perhaps we shared an ability to remember large amounts of spoken data, to store it and reassemble it when the time came. He graduated in 1942 with a slew of extracurricular activities on his roster, including debate and writing. That’s his senior picture. The day he graduated, he was drafted into the Army.

He met my Grandmother, Halcyon Heline, during the war, and she started writing him letters. For the longest time, he did not know the extent to which she’d written other soldiers letters. He discovered it one day when we were eating a hamburger together. Grandmother’s brother was in the war — was killed in the war — so she wrote a lot of letters to try to cheer the men up. She was charming and vivacious, the daughter of a natural diplomat, so I’m sure she succeeded. Grandfather chucked at this revelation. “I thought I was the only one,” he said.

“I knew your Grandfather would make a good father,” said Grandmother. “He was a good man.” So on April 10, 1952, at the ripe age of 31, she settled down with him, and they had four children in quick succession — so close together they had to hire a nanny. They often lived where the oil was, spending time in Iowa on numerous visits back to the Heline farm. They eventually moved back to Tulsa, Oklahoma, into the house my Grandfather was born in.

They sent their children to public schools in Tulsa, and this is where things start to get a little bit controversial. According to previous conversations with my Dad, school was a time for putting grasshoppers in the fan and exploding their guts all over the classroom because there was little better to do. According to my uncle Geoff, growing up attending public schools made him into a Marxist — I assume that’s what he means when he says “I was trained to be a compliant, rational Marxist. I was recruited to be a self-conscious supporter of a social order that was Marxist. This required my willing trust in the state as a utopian savior and antagonism to the God of Christendom,” since you could not possibly assert that my Grandparents or any of their friends were Marxists. As far as the wishes of my Grandfather were concerned, the four children were trained to be conservative, God-fearing Christians, although they were apparently not forced to go to church every Sunday. I suppose my uncle might believe that the fact that he learned math from teachers whose salaries were paid by taxes means that he was implicitly inculcated with the idea that taxes should pay for education — while perhaps concurrently assuming that taxation (or public school) is more or less Marxism. Or perhaps that’s a veiled reference to the fact that he grew up reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Or perhaps, unknown to any of the rest of my family, he really did toy with the idea of Marxism in high school or college. He attended high school in the late 1960s, shortly before his move to Norman, Oklahoma, and personal conversion to Christianity in the early 1970s. I suppose it’s entirely possible that he knew people who talked about Marxism during this timeframe. Whatever the case, it would be a great blow to my Grandfather to have been lumped in with a supposedly-Marxist upbringing, which is what some people seem to assume about him based on my uncle’s assertions.

Given the premise that having someone else pay for your contraception or chosen method of family planning makes you a prostitute

To avoid having one party in any relationship reduced to prostitution, it is necessary for them to equally divide the cost of contraception, perhaps calculating it out per encounter and leaving the money on the bedside table. Remember, the more careful you are with the coin-counting, the less likely that you will actually be a whore or a john.

If you chose the rhythm method, you should make sure this applies to any calendar you use to calculate when you are ovulating. If you use a free calendar from a non-profit, assume the non-profit is paying for you to have sex/ not have sex. Obviously, you don’t want to do this, so you need to buy your own calendar — or most accurately, half of a calendar. Hence, housewives, you need to have your own personal source of income separate from your husband’s. Remember, if he pays for it, or even if you pay for it out of an account you’ve both contributed to at different times, you’re a prostitute, given the above premise.

The American medical system is suffering from two epistemological errors: the idea that to get any medical treatment you must get a certified doctor’s sign-off, and the idea that if you don’t, you can sue somebody for millions. You can talk all you want about evil insurance companies, but the cost of medical care in the US is the highest in the world, and last time I checked, the average US hospital was breaking even. And I know how much they charge. What’s going on here?

It really boils down to our country’s ethos in matters of money and independence. First: We are not going to be told what to do unless it’s by an expert, and if the expert turns out to be wrong, we will make them pay. Second: The right job will provide riches, though this may require some up-front investment.

We want money. We believe we deserve it. We deserve to live a certain lifestyle. In an economic downturn, this becomes all the more obvious. Many people drop out of the workforce, resenting the idea that they’ll have to take a lesser job, and…

Go to law school. The law schools, meanwhile, have churned out so many graduates that there is no room at the Inn, no positions at big firms, not even for Ivy League graduates. And yet the schools fool these dupes, their supposed students, into believing that riches cost a mere $100,000-plus and three years of study on how to glean money from conflict and vague wording.

Result: a gigantic unemployed workforce with massive debt and a sense of entitlement. More than often, these people also emerge with a malleable view of truth (truth is adhering to certain rules, though these do not apply when I myself find a loophole, which is always). What are they going to do with their time?

Certainly, not every lawyer is, shall we say, an arrogant bloodsucker. At best, law school can attract those wanting to champion social justice. At worst, however, it can attract high-conflict personalities with a devious streak whose ideas about how to get what they want (do anything to get information, double-cross, deny anything not on the record, do not reveal your hand until the time is ripe to strike, research with a pre-determined outcome in mind) only become further entrenched and encouraged. As one lawyer said: “Nobody listened to my crazy ideas until I went to law school. Then they were forced to listen.”

In order for civil attorneys to make a living, they need to encourage other people to disagree. This applies even to the wills and contracts they write. Why would you need a lawyer to draft your will or a contract unless you suspected your preference wouldn’t be enough?

Civil lawyering has ballooned into a monster that touches everything we do, impedes our ability to make decisions, makes us overly cautious and suspicious. You can’t start a business without worrying about all the legal red tape first, even if you’re pretty sure you won’t turn a profit for two years and can’t afford any extra expense. You can’t let acquaintances borrow a bike without the potential that they could hold you legally responsible for the fact that they crashed. You really can’t make a wrong decision or leave something undone if you’re somebody who’s supposed to be rich. Lawyers don’t sue the poor. It just doesn’t pay as well.

You may chalk all this up to exaggeration, but currently, for example, there is no legal way to practice midwifery in New York City because the hospital that backed the midwives with malpractice insurance and the stamp of approval went bankrupt. Yes, hospitals go bankrupt. Especially if they cover professions like midwifery, classified as high-risk from a legal standpoint. Nobody else in NYC wants to take the midwives on for the same reason.

But imagine, if you will, a world in which you didn’t need such backing in order to choose a home birth. Imagine, too, a world in which if you knew concretely what was wrong with you, you could get a pharmacist technician type to look at you and your records and prescribe the appropriate medicine. You have a UTI; you know you do, because you get them often enough. It’s been a week and it’s only gotten worse. It’s agonizing to pee. You know you need antibiotics, stat. Or you’ve developed circular rashes on your body; it looks like classic ringworm, and the herbal remedies haven’t helped. Or you have a migraine and your Imitrex prescription just ran out. Or your kid has strep; you suspect it’s strep, it looks like strep, it smells like strep. You know there’s a simple culture to prove it’s strep, but the visit to the doctor is going to be at least $50, even with co-pay.

You’re going to have to go see a highly trained professional in order to get access to what you already know you need. Because nobody is going to give it to you otherwise… the risk of getting sued is just too great. You pay for a litigious system two ways: with malpractice insurance and with the years and years of expensive training physicians receive in order to rubber-stamp your request.

You want the cost of health care to drop? Shut down the law schools for a couple of years, and send half the lawyers to gut fish in Alaska for 12 hours a day. We have the highest number of lawyers per capita to match our highest cost of health care. I doubt this is a coincidence. We live shorter lives than those with lower costs, after all.